Classical music: VSO Institute a highlight of Canada Day weekend concertsBack to video

Canada Day defines the start of summer, and with it a seismic shift in our concert-going habits: summer is the time for festivals, special events, summer music programs, and (weather permitting) outdoor events.

While our national day isn’t quite as glitzy as that other July holiday south of the border, we still have lots of music to help celebrate over the course of the extended holiday weekend.

For a few years, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra tried a summer program at Whistler. The advantages of the closer, but still scenic, University of British Columbia campus proved just too hard to resist, and the VSO Orchestral Institute now partners with UBC’s British Columbia Chamber Orchestra Festival.

There are training initiatives of every description for talented young players. Add in opportunities for soloists in the form of a concerto competition, plus a program for developing conductors, and the endeavour really offers listening opportunities for most classical fans.

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The VSO Orchestral Institute plays the Chan Centre on July 3. /PNG

After all the rehearsing and coaching, VSO music director Otto Tausk will lead the crack student ensemble in an impressive all-Russian program at UBC’s Chan Centre, July 3.

The repertoire, perhaps derived from Tausk’s time assisting explosive conductor Valery Gergiev, includes Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, Ravel’s virtuoso orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, the March from Prokofiev’s daffy opera The Love of Three Oranges, and Shostakovich’s splendid Fifth Symphony.

This program might easily give pause to seasoned pros; but having seen Otto Tausk working with students, and knowing the enthusiasm of fine student ensembles, I can confidently predict plenty of musical fireworks.

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UBC’s Chamber Orchestra Festival picks up when the symphony’s project ends, July 4 to 10. Conductor Jonathan Girard has been doing excellent work with UBC’s Symphony Orchestra, and he’s doing summer duty as artistic director of the fledgling Chamber Orchestra initiative.

Two public concerts are planned: a program featuring concerto soloists from the VSO Institute and Conducting Fellows (July 8, 7:30, p.m.) and a program with Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 in A Major, Op. 90, the “Italian,” (July 10, 7:30 p.m.) both at the Chan Centre. Details at music.ubc.ca.

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There’s plenty more listening for the Canada Day Weekend, here and in nearby destinations:

Local

The very busy Tausk and the Vancouver Symphony offer two free concerts at Burnaby’s Deer Lake Park over the long weekend (vancouversymphony.ca):

• The Vancouver Island Symphony celebrates its 25th anniversary season with the popular vocal trio The Tenors, who performed with the VIS in its first two years. One concert only in Nanaimo, June 29, 7:30 p.m. at Port Theatre (vancouverislandsymphony.com).

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South of the Border

• The Bellingham Festival of Music kicks off June 29, 7:30 p.m. in the Western Washington University Performing Arts Center. George Li is the soloist in Prokovief’s Third Piano Concerto, with Rachmaninov’s lush Second Symphony filling out the program (bellinghamfestival.org).

• The Seattle Chamber Music Festival (run by Canada’s own James Ehnes) launches a month of concerts July 1, 8 p.m. (pre-concert talk 7 p.m.) in the Nordstrom Recital Hall, with a program including Mozart and Poulenc (the latter’s Violin Sonata, played by Ehnes with pianist Orion Weiss), ending with Brahms’s festive G minor Piano Quartet (seattlechambermusic.org).

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